If you’re training experience has been like my own, you have probably, at various points in your life, been told to do one of three things with your hands when throwing a round kick:
Hold your arms statically in guard
Swing your arm downward on the same side as the kicking leg
In my own experience, I’ve been taught all three - the first by my karate instructor, the second by my MMA coach, the third by my Muay Thai coach.
Option 1) always felt terrible for me, and seemed to slow down the kick and reduce the power substantially.
The general consensus I’ve heard is that 2) gives you more power and 3) provides better defense. I want to try and unpack that a bit.
In my own experience, the extent to which I want to lower my arm is inverse to the height of the kick. When throwing a head kick, I’ll do a full bore arm swing; I’m not terribly concerned about using that arm to protect, since my damn leg is now covering my high line. Moreover, I feel like the arm swinging downward helps counterbalance bringing the leg up.
On leg kicks, though, the kick feels -worse- doing a full arm swing instead of a forward extension. I don’t feel like I’m particularly getting more power out of my kick, and I’m just extending the recovery time. Because I’m not lifting the leg terribly high -even when really chopping down on the thigh - there isn’t the need for the bigger arm and body motion of a head kick.
On body kicks, the arm does tend to come lower, but as I posted an entire thread on before, I’m not the biggest fan of body kicks in the first place unless its to the liver.
As I’m chewing it over, I’m starting to feel like the arm-swing and the arm-extension are not wholly separate techniques or methodologies, but sort of a spectrum of kicking arm-position.
Number 1) is IMO the worst since keeping an arm so close to your body unbalance you if you lean backward in order to kick higher. My coach advocate 3) since it is not uncommon in my style to catch a roundkick while punching the other guy. Plus It tend to be cool for low kicks, because you can use your extended arm to disturb the other guy’s sight and hit the low kick easily. 2) is subject to controversy : of course it is powerful, but power is not always the only thing you want. It is ok to use it occasionnaly when you’re sure you will land this head kick, but you might want to use your arm extended on some occasions for either protection or distraction. We had a talk about this in this thread https://www.bullshido.net/forums/showthread.php?t=127308. There seems to be no real and definitive consensus on this across the world, since nearly every muay thai fighter swing the arm a lot, while many others stylist advocate not to. It might be related to rules and what could happened in the ring/cage/mats. But both seems to work well to some extend
I’ve tried out all three. I was taught 1 initially but that was with a kickboxer who was a boxer first. Then when I went to MT, I was taught 2. I tried out 3 for a while just from watching lots of MT matches and seeing them do it, but went back to 2 eventually. 2 feels more natural to me and I like the way my body ends up on a missed kick.
Right or wrong really depends on what you’re attempting to do with it, tbh.
You may say keeping hands up in the guard has its advantages in the sense that of all the options, this allows for a quick follow up for punches. When it comes to throwing the arm this offers the most power of the three, and finally if you extend your arm out with the kick this is the most defensive to keeping you from getting dropped with a punching counter.
disadvantage of 3 is that you can’t really throw a good superman punch off a (maybe feigned) body/leg kick, which was one of my favourite and most reliable tricks when I kickboxed regularly. I like 2 best. I notice that on leg kicks I don’t really swing down consistently. Rather, I initially start the swing down, and correct it to be more horizontal as I start to turn my hips over and the leg goes more horizontal/diagonally downwards.
I hate 3, as it’s a good way to eat a cross. But then again, I’ve never been a tremendous high kicker due to knees that love to dislocate. I have however made people eat my cross.
For low kicks, I actually have no problem with 1. If I’m kicking someone in the thigh, it doesn’t upset my balance. I also like to land a kick, plant on forward side (no retraction), and go for clinch/throw. Having both hands up really helps this tactic.
One of my old kickboxing instructors found it strange that I did 1 so often, but said my power was plenty good, so there was no reason to do anything different.
2 I really don’t have a problem with. Decent counterbalance without screwing your defense too badly.
Take what I’m saying with a grain of salt, because I have never been a high level kickboxer. But damn, I love to bury a full commitment leg kick, and have won a few matches against suckas with it. One-kick dead-legged fight finishers!
I kinda do a hybrid of 1 and 2 by swinging my elbow back while keeping my fist pointed forward. Pulling just the elbow back still gives you that extending pelvic action.
[QUOTE=RynoGreene;2970023]I hate 3, as it’s a good way to eat a cross. But then again, I’ve never been a tremendous high kicker due to knees that love to dislocate. I have however made people eat my cross.
[/QUOTE]
I’m a bit confused by this, as the purpose of the arm extension is the guard the high line while kicking. How are those crosses getting through?
[QUOTE=TheMightyMcClaw;2970317]I’m a bit confused by this, as the purpose of the arm extension is the guard the high line while kicking. How are those crosses getting through?[/QUOTE]
Dumbass me. Flipped 2 and 3.
I’m really partial to the extended arm, and it has a few perks with it.
So when I fight the idea it to prevent the rotation of my jaw. This is he primary reasons fighters are taught to keep their hands up. Not just up, but actively pushing against their temple.
“Feel your glove against your face or you’ll end up feeling mine.” Is how I was taught.
So imagine your neck isn’t working and your hands are holding your head straight. If you straighten your arm out in front of you, your shoulder is recruited with much more structure supporting it in the process. This does a terrific job of protecting against a ko strike of a hard shot gets through. This is the primary reason I’m partial to it
Was doing a tryout at a school that was associated with Master Toddy, and they seemed to have a huge problem with the arm swing that I was always trained to do. I tried doing the arm extension but I can’t get an ounce of power from it. A wing chun punch is substantially stronger than my thai kick with an extended rear arm. The instructor said that there were a lot of misconceptions about the thai kick, and that arm rotation does not generate any more speed or power, so there’s simply no reason to do it. Maybe it’s just how unused to the arm extension I am, but that just seems so wrong.I tried to orchestrate a test when I got home to kind of isolate variables and test this out. I stood in a TKD blade/surf stance with both feet facing 3 o clock (orthodox). And I would try to move the back foot around the clock and place it in front of the other foot so that I am southpaw and the toes are facing 9 o clock. The only two movements here are the hip rotation of 180 degrees, and the feet rotation of 180 degrees, so it’s the same mechanics of the kick isolated into just two movements. Even keeping the leg perfectly locked, which is another thing I was instructed to do even though I’ve never seen someone not have a slight bend to their roundhouse (i.e. limp leg swinging). So when doing my stance switching drill, I was not even remotely surprised to find that if I kept my arms glued to the sides or folded, I was remarkably slower at switch-stepping across a room than if I were to mimic the arm swing of a roundhouse.I don’t doubt that with practice anyone can gain lots of power from the arm extension, but I highly doubt anyone would be able to do the drill I did with the exact same speed and explosiveness regardless of what the arms were doing. They definitely create torque and it’s pretty insulting to me that I was told that this style of kicking is wrong. This is especially frustrating because the instructor brought up hook punching vertical as a preference of his that I should try out, but apparently the roundhouse (a kick that I’ve been complimented on as being much better developed than the rest of my game at other MMA schools) was all wrong unless your kicking leg was perfectly locked and your arm reaches into their face. I’ve also never been cross-countered in sparring because my lead hand always covers, but that might also be because I’m usually taller than anyone I spar with. But regardless, I love the rear arm swing and don’t think I could ever give it up.
It’s not all that uncommon in my experience for instructors to mistake the way they learned to do things for the only correct way to do them. Though I’d definitely expect any good muay thai instructor to have encountered the arm swing enough to see its a legit variation.
I often turn a parry (of a jab) into an arm swing for my counter kick, so I like it for that reason too.
Interesting Thread. From what I have seen, In Thailand there is no consensus about this too, thought the latter and most extended way would be swinging your kicking leg arm downwards, but I would say this is maybe an easier way to learn the DTAE or Muay Thai roundhouse kick. There are many boxers, specially older that I have seen not using that full swing and keeping the guard up, although you can still use a slight movement of the arms. I like this approach personally, but when teaching it I do like they taught me, with the full swing of the arm, this makes it easier for people to get the movement, and for kids, you teach them to grab their ear with the other hand when kicking so they keep the guard.
Later on when you have it already, is easy to still do all the twist and torque motion without having to use your arms.
In Muay Chaiya, one of the old styles from the south, we have this characteristic swinging kick that is very different. So in the chaiya kick, you always keep your arms in the guard and only turn the body, keeping your head off target by swinging your torso and lowering, so the power of the kick comes from a full body weight transfer, Chaiya uses this as a signature way of developing power, and is like a seesaw.
So the Chaiya kick is not really a DTAE or Thai lateral kick, cause in chaiya you keep the leg bent…the Muay Thai DTAE uses the swinging it as a unit…while the chaiya kick throws the whole body as a unit.
I personally use the HCaiya kick for lower and close quarter kicks and the sports roundhouse for head and further distance kicks. Both work great in my opinion, but I would say not swinging the arm and trying to keep the guard has more benefits, not only for protection but for continuity, for example in Muay Chaiya, is a very common combination to do the swinging kick, and proceed with hammer fists, that come straight for the guard, while in some sports you cant do those strikes, if you swinged your arm downwards you would not only open the guard but discard offensive moves with that arm, also is easier to control that arm that goes down from a grappling perspective.